Three months after vanishing and six days before her foot washed up on a NSW beach, Melissa Caddick's disappearance continued to stump police.
The 49-year-old was reported missing by her husband Anthony Koletti on November 13, 2020, two days after corporate watchdog ASIC and Australian Federal Police officers raided her Dover Heights home.
The final day of an inquest into her disappearance has heard police struggled to watch the mountain of video evidence they had gathered.
By the time of a case review on February 15, 2021, only about 20 per cent of the gathered CCTV evidence had been watched.
Eastern Suburbs Police Area Command Detective Inspector Gretchen Atkins said injured or otherwise restricted officers from the area were assigned to reviewing CCTV from around the Dover Heights home where Caddick was last seen and from airports and other departure points.
"We were quite short staffed at the time," Det Insp Atkins told the inquest on Tuesday.
Detective Sergeant Michael Foscholo, who took over as officer-in-charge of the investigation as it began to attract widespread attention, wanted more help.
"With the resources I had at my disposal we were pushing through it," he said.
"Extra resources would have been good."
His superior, Det Insp Atkins, said she tried to provide them.
"I gave him what I could at the time," she said.
"It was time consuming and painstaking and he was trying to review it as quickly as possible."
Det Sgt Foscholo took over as officer-in-charge 10 days after Caddick was reported missing.
He told the inquiry his strategy was to immediately "saturate" the area surrounding her home, canvassing for any CCTV that could be useful before it was deleted or overwritten.
A couple pieces of potential footage was lost, he said.
But the CCTV was only one part of a complex investigation that was starting to attract widespread attention.
"It was clear to me that Melissa Caddick was not just going to hand herself into a police station," Det Sgt Foscholo said.
Caddick defrauded family and friends of between $20 million-$30 million in a Ponzi scheme before her disappearance.
Her decomposing foot washed up in a running shoe on the NSW south coast's Bournda Beach in February 2021, some 350 kilometres from the home Caddick was last seen at in Sydney's eastern suburbs.
Lifeline 13 11 14
beyondblue 1300 22 4636